A Journey With Discernment
FROM TRANSFORMATIONAL LISTENING 1 GRADUATE, QUAIME
The word “discernment” gets tossed around in a variety of spheres. I have had the privilege of being an admissions application reader for a professional school and a volunteer interviewer for my college alma mater. I have heard the “pros” in the business of higher ed admissions refer to the decision-making of candidates as discernment.
Inculcating the vocabulary of that field, I find myself using it with my career advisees as they try to figure out whether to take a job that pays less than they were expecting, but at least gets them some concrete experience, as opposed to waiting for the “right” job, which may not, or ever, come. To date, they have never asked me what I mean by “discernment,” and I have not offered. It just seemed like one of those cool, pseudo-metaphysical terms, like “meaning making,” “meeting the moment,” and re-imagining, that a sagacious pop-culture intellectual puts out there and everyone gets.
But what does the term mean for me? I have been a follower of Christ for as long as I can remember. I have been praying since I could understand the words of my parents. Yet somewhere along the way, I came to think of God’s role in my decision-making as a lot like going to the ATM; I need $X amount; hopefully my balance with You, Great Bank, is sufficient; please don’t take too long; maybe I remember to say “thank you,” after that transaction; and I forget to check back in again or even remember what I took out unless something goes awry. In short, “God, here is what I want. I kind of know what I want to do but I don’t feel all that great that it will work out. I hope You can come through for me (because if You don’t, I am going to resent You a little bit and maybe not come to You directly next time).”
Then, oddly enough, two units of TL1 zeroed in on discernment: Session #6, “Learning Jesus,” and Session #7, “The Art of Discernment.” Our principal text for those two sessions was Elizabeth Liebert’s The Way of Discernment. For me, the book read more like a fairly systematic workbook on the practice of discernment and I was instantly intrigued.
Two major takeaways stuck with me:
Discernment is a lifestyle, not a finite, acute practice. As such, it necessarily includes wins and losses, approbation and disappointment, joys and laments. Just because something does not work out, it does not mean that God was not a part of it. We have the liberty to make our own choices. And yes, sometimes, many times, those choices don’t lead to the outcomes we desire, but that doesn’t make the choice bad or a mark of failure in a greater cosmology in which ultimately our lives are in the hands of the most powerful and absolute being in all of existence. Such a notion for me was shockingly liberating as I looked back on marks of seeming failure in my life that ultimately God used to fulfill a great purpose I could not envision in the moment.
Discernment is really about cultivating a relationship with God. It is an ongoing journey of walking with the Lord for the big and small matters of life, and entrusting them to his care. That journey is both inward and external: I walk in my prayer and devotional life, and I also walk in community with other believers, with the intent that we can help each other better understand and realize God’s presence and a need to be in communion with the same.
Perhaps more than any other components of our class, this topic really crystalized for me why spiritual direction matters. A director is not a therapist or a life coach. Rather, one helps the individual to “see” and “hear” more clearly from a lovely Father and Savior, awakening one to a presence that was always there–but I was too busy, too proud, too lazy, or too bitter to realize Him. While God is interested in our successes, that is incidental to His real love: us. A soul companion helps us to realize that the question in front of us to be answered is more than: do I take this job? Is that school right for me? Do I belong in this church? Is he/she “the one? Was that diagnosis right?
Now that our class has concluded, I hope to approach discernment differently, as an invitation to deeper relationship with God. And a goal I have set for the coming months is to, for the first time, include spiritual direction into the rhythm of my work with the Lord. I hope to come back to PAX for TL2 perhaps in a year or two, but for now, I want to experience this more tangibly for myself and I am thankful for our time together in TL1 for bringing me a new appreciation for the value of connecting and walking with God in community.
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